Los Angeles is affectionately referred to as ‘the city of angels' and not-so affectionately as ‘the city of carbon monoxide.'
This is a place where everyone, no matter how financially-challenged, owns a car to travel from one end to the other of an expansive town criss-crossed by freeways. And now city officials are beseeching us to take public transit, carpool, cycle (hang on while I pick myself up off the floor from a laughing fit; cyclists become mysteriously invisible on the streets of a city where Car is God) - anything to save the environment.
So the other day I took the bus downtown to visit a friend. It was a 30-minute, one-bus ride and I had a window seat and a good book. Not bad, I thought. Maybe I could even do this on a regular—
What the fuck?
Someone had turned on their radio so loud that I jumped in my seat. I looked around for the offender, couldn't pinpoint him, opened my book, couldn't concentrate, gazed out the window, couldn't relax, tried to eavesdrop on the man wearing two sets of glasses talking to himself, couldn't hear him, surveyed the other passengers like a sniper peering through a riflescope and then realized: the noise was coming from the television suspended behind the driver.
A television on a bus?
The news was playing - LOUDLY, did I mention that? - and I was forced to listen to reports of murder, violence, betrayal and hundreds of thousands of newly-lost jobs. In my life I choose not to watch the news because it is chock full o' tragedies and negativity, and all that does is permeate my mind and ferment like pickled ginger. (Honestly, how is knowing all the grim details of a man dismembering and eating his family on the other side of the country useful to me?) But, trapped on a moving, public vehicle, I was stripped of that choice. I couldn't read, I couldn't daydream, and if I'd been with a friend, conversation would've been difficult. That's how loud and obnoxious the metro idiot box was.
And to make matters worse, every 5-8 blocks the computerized voice announcing the next stop blared over the top of the news report, so that it sounded like a screaming match between sports commentators trying to out-do each other. The TV distracted me from clearly hearing the next stop, and the stop announcer prevented me from clearly hearing just how many women a certain celebrity has cheated on his wife with (wait, was that fifteen or fifty? My life depends on that detail, goddammit!).
Not only were my senses of sight and sound violated, but with the shock-absorber-free wheels hitting potholes every few yards, my spine was collapsing and expanding like an accordion. I got up to give my seat to an older woman with several bags but I felt like I was betraying her warm thanks as I rubbed my freshly bruised ass and stretched my neck.
As I stood there, one hand on the bar above me, the other keeping my purse strap on my shoulder, being flung to and fro like knickers on a clothesline, I couldn't help but shake my head (which was actually quite involuntary) in wonder. The whole ride had been jarring, loud, distracting, unnerving and totally unpleasant.
And they want us to abandon our cars for this?
No comments:
Post a Comment